LONDON—Europe's banks are sitting on vast quantities of loans to individuals and businesses in cash-strapped Southern European countries, highlighting how plain-vanilla loans, not just government debt, pose potential risks to the Continent's troubled banking system.

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — HSBC’s China “flash” manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a 28-month low in July, indicating activity is now beginning to contract in an economy that’s seen as a barometer of global growth and a price-setter for many commodities.

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) — HSBC’s China “flash” manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index fell to a 28-month low in July, indicating activity is now beginning to contract in an economy that’s seen as a barometer of global growth and a price-setter for many commodities.

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) — The companies that compile consumer credit reports and scores — the firms people love to hate because they control so much of our financial lives — are set to come under new oversight Thursday.

The newly formed Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is scheduled on July 21 to take over from bank regulators a swath of consumer-product regulatory functions, including some oversight of mortgage and other credit products.

BEIJING (MarketWatch) -- China isn't manipulating the prices of rare-earth minerals and it's a "misunderstanding" that the rise is caused by the government, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology spokesman Zhu Hongren said Thursday.

The economic crisis through which the United States and much of the rest of the world are now passing is not another supposed instance of the “failure” of unrestrained capitalism. It is the failure of the government’s own policies. In other words, it is a crisis of the Interventionist State.

The recession has been the inevitable outcome of the prior artificial investment boom and housing bubble, which were caused by the misguided and highly expansionary monetary policy of the Federal Reserve between 2003 and 2008. The money supply was increased by nearly 50 percent during this five-year period, and key interest rates, when adjusted for inflation, were at or below zero.....

Exhausting the Reserve Fund: The Big Picture of the Limits to Big Government (Part II)

Wind proponents have again and again touted their technology’s coming viability. For example, Chris Flavin of the Worldwatch Institute said back in the 1984: “”Tax credits have been essential to the economic viability of wind farms so far, but will not be needed within a few years.” (2) More such promises have been made over the decades.

Yet for all the promises made, we have little to show for the money spent. Consider these points: